What do you do when your waiter is high on something other than life?

Drugs, both legal and illegal, are part of life in the restaurant business. Stephen Lam/The San Franicsco Chronicle 2009

From a reader:

I had an odd experience today which gave rise to a bit of etiquette anxiety. Having lunch with my wife and a friend at a restaurant in Oakland, we were beset by a server who acted so bizarrely, who babbled so incessantly, who over-shared so much, that she must have been high on something.

So the question is: What do you do when you think your server is high? In college I bussed tables at a fine-dining establishment in Malibu, so I know that a nip of booze here and there is part and parcel of restaurant life, even in the front of the house. But the unspoken rule is that customers must never suspect. So what do you do, as a customer, when your server appears to have violated this silent compact by showing up to work having snorted her breakfast?

Today, when we became suspicious of our server’s state of mind after she took our orders, our options seemed to be: (1) grimace and bear it; (2) confront her directly and invite her negative reaction, perhaps even a bizarre or explosive reaction; or (3) call in the manager and run the risk that they won’t do the right thing — which seems kind of likely, given that they’ve got this server on the floor.

We opted for number 1. Though we were spared the discomfort of confrontation, we bore the discomfort of having to listen to our truly bizarre and quite possibly coke-addled server. Given your line of work, you’ve probably been on receiving end of more than your fair share of hopped-up servers. What was the right thing to do?

Drugs — especially cocaine and alcohol — seem to be a hazard of the restaurant business. When a waiter or cook is in the throes of service, pumping out food or running between tables, there’s an adrenalin high. It takes a while to relax after a shift, so many will go out. If the pattern continues, it’s hard to get energized the next day, which may require some to indulge in a chemical boost.

Some restaurants have a drug policy in place, but many do not. I’ve had my share of waiters with saucer-size pupils, who seem to be constantly moving, but not often efficiently. At times it can feel like you’re on a radio station with a two second delay between the stimulus — the customer talking — and the reaction.

At times it’s been so obvious that it becomes a subject of discussion among my tablemates. Generally, the waiter can still do his or her job, so it’s not that big of a problem from a diner’s perspective. In this case, it sounded as if the waiter was out of control, and talking to the manager might have been the best approach.